Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

CULTURAL RELATIONS AND THE NEW RICH 35
In making these points, Bourdieu seeks to combine two kinds of explanation, one
rooted in the economic, the other in social relations. The second is the basis of ‘the
symbolic struggles between the classes’ (1989:250) and concerns the way in which
each class defines itself vis-à-vis another in terms of various binary oppositional
qualities (1989:246—7). Bourdieu also draws attention to the internal complexities
of the bourgeoisie and, in particular, the struggle over what constitutes distinction or
legitimate taste (1989:254). 42
A third point in Bourdieu’s account, which has immediate relevance to our
understanding of the new rich in Asia, is his reference to the class trajectories of
the ‘new bourgeoisie’ and the ‘new petite bourgeoisie’. We already have a sense of
the way in which the cultural identity of the growing middle classes might be built
around an uneasy striving for the lifestyle and assured personal qualities
associated with the established bourgeoisie. The further point about cultural capital
is that it cannot be acquired quickly, as may be possible with monetary wealth;
rather, it is cultivated over generations to become something ingrained, and more
or less unconscious, embedded in one’s habitus (socialised predisposition), hence
the qualities of ease, assurance and nonchalant detachment that are said to
characterise those with high cultural capital. Thus, we might expect the new
bourgeoisies of Asia to be striving for, but lacking, these qualities. But Bourdieu
also says something else about the new bourgeoisie, suggestive both of a greater
level of self-assertion and of a shifting set of economic conditions that generate new
styles and modes of consumption. Here his account comes closest to that of
Veblen:
The new bourgeoisie is the initiator of the ethical retooling required by the
new economy from which it draws its power and profits… The new logic of
the economy rejects the ascetic ethic of production and accumulation based
on abstinence, sobriety, saving and calculation, in favour of a hedonistic
morality of consumption, based on credit spending and enjoyment. This
economy demands a social world which judges people by their capacity for
consumption, their ‘standard of living’, their lifestyle, as much as their
capacity for production.
(1989:310)
There is a significant difference between Veblen’s and Bourdieu’s accounts which
helps to throw some light on the nature of class, consumption and status in
contemporary Asia. While Bourdieu deals with a society in which there is an old
rich elite who use cultural capital to distinguish themselves both from the new rich
and the petite bourgeoisie, Veblen’s account deals with a society in which there is
arguably no old rich in possession of an established store of cultural capital by
which to denounce, exclude or cultivate the upwardly mobile. 43 Where Bourdieu’s
reference to the pretensions of the petit bourgeois seems to reflect the prejudices of
the French bourgeoisie, Veblen’s satire is levelled at the American bourgeoisie
itself and comes from without. Moreover, in contrast to Bourdieu’s French